This is a complete transcript of the oral history interview with Lydia Christine Wire Maillefer (CN 328 T2) for the Billy Graham Center Archives. No spoken words which were recorded are omitted. In a very few cases, the transcribers could not understand what was said, in which case [unclear] was inserted. Also, grunts and verbal hesitations such as “ah” or “um” are usually omitted. Readers of this transcript should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and even rule than written English. Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence of the speaker. Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence. ( ) Word in parentheses are asides made by the speaker. [ ] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber. This transcript was created by Bob Shuster and a student worker and was completed in May 2016. Please note: This oral history interview expresses the personal memories and opinions of the interviewee and does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Billy Graham Center Archives or Wheaton College. © 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 328, T2 Transcript - Page 2 Collection 328, Tape 2. Oral history interview with Lydia Maillefer by Paul A. Ericksen on June 2, 1986. ERICKSEN: This is an oral history interview with Lydia Christine Wire Maillefer by Paul Ericksen for the Missionary Sources Collection of Wheaton College. This interview took place at the offices of the Billy Graham Center Archives at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois on June 2nd, 1986 at eight forty-five a.m. Well, Mrs. Maillefer, I=d like to begin by going back to your days at Wheaton. MAILLEFER: Okay. ERICKSEN: Why did you come to Wheaton? MAILLEFER: Well, I suppose proximity, which meant familiarity. I grew up just thirty miles north-east of here. And there were about four or five of us from our church who came out that year. ERICKSEN: Had you ever been to Wheaton before for a visit? MAILLEFER: No, they didn=t have a senior visit days at the...in that time. I didn=t...there wasn=t room for me in the dorms. I guess I was on the shirt-tail list of those accepted. And so they told me I could come if I could find my own room. So my pastor=s wife came out with me, and we found a room near the college. So my first year, I stayed off campus. ERICKSEN: And where was that? MAILLEFER: On Michigan...Michigan Ave., just near where the furlough homes are now. ERICKSEN: Oh. Do you recall what your first impressions of Wheaton were? MAILLEFER: You mean as far as buildings and classes or social or what do you mean? Everything? ERICKSEN: Each. MAILLEFER: Well, I was not impressed with Blanchard. I remember being quite disturbed to see such an old, decrepit building, coming out of a very modern high school on the North Shore, but, of course, that grows on you. Some of the classrooms, of course, were not too mod either then, because of being in Blanchard. It=s quite a different school now. Socially, I think I was disappointed, because I had come out of a huge, very non-Christian high school of two thousand four hundred students, and there were only twenty of us that we could find in the whole school who were Christians. So I was looking for utopia, which it wasn=t. But later on, of course, I realized that that=s...it=s what you make it. And academically, I don=t think I was disappointed, although as I look back now, I don=t think some of the courses were...were too...really needed...met my need for being a missionary. © 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 328, T2 Transcript - Page 3 ERICKSEN: Can you think of any examples? MAILLEFER: Well, I think specifically of General Psychology or Intro...Introduction to to Psychology, or something like that. It certainly wasn=t what I would have expected, when I hear what my daughter got in her classes now. I remember being very overwhelmed by the old professors who were sitting on Edman platform, and there seemed to have been a fair grouping of really elderly professors, and I was quite awed by them, coming out of a...a high school that had more younger teachers. ERICKSEN: Uh-huh. MAILLEFER: Which, I suppose is all right. You sort of think, AWell, I=ve really come to the halls of learning of the white-haired people.@ ERICKSEN: Any professors which stand out from your time here? MAILLEFER: I think Dr. [James M.] Murk in the Sociology Department. And Dr. [Joseph P.] Free I had for Archeology. I took Archeology and Anthropology Introduction my first year, and I didn=t even know what the words meant. [clears throat] I was very impressed with the Archeology course. Not the Anthropology. I don=t think that was what I needed my first year of college. I don=t think I was ready for that kind of a course, but it was required for Christian Ed. But the person who influenced my life the most was certainly Mrs. [Mingon B.] Mackenzie, from the [Women=s] Glee Club, because I was in the Glee Club four years, and her gracious ways and her very aristocratic bearing was a tremendous example to all of us. ERICKSEN: Can you think of any incident which illustrates those? MAILLEFER: You mean from Mrs. Mackenzie? ERICKSEN: Mackenzie, yes. MAILLEFER: Oh, I think many. She was a...she really instilled in us the need of living for Christ on our tour. Not so much that we would be blatant evangelists, in one way or another, but that we would portray a gracious, Christ-like spirit, especially in the homes that we visited, and that was really instilled in us, even down to how we should leave the beds in the morning, and going into a home, we shouldn=t sit like stumps on a log. If we couldn=t think of anything to say, we should look around at some object in the room that interested us, and then ask them about it, and that would get the conversation going, and so much of all that was a real help to me, having now been a world traveler and having to be in many, many homes. And then, of course, all the music that I did with her over four years was a...has come to use in a way that I would never have expected it, because I didn=t...I got into a lot of music overseas with the Africans, and then, later on, with Mks [missionary kids]. And although I wasn=t a music major, a lot of what she taught us just sort of went in by practical experience, and I was able to use that in choirs with young people to a tremendous point that I think that young people, both Africans and missionary kids, profited from what I learned from her, just because I was able to participate with them in music, although I © 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 328, T2 Transcript - Page 4 wasn=t a music major. She was definitely the greatest experience, for me, on...on Wheaton campus. And I think there were other professors. Like, well, Dean of Women, Mrs. Smith, was another person that I...I think all of us looked up to as a very gracious, Christ-like person. So there weren=t really the...there weren=t really the academics that impressed me. Perhaps, if I had been a brain, I would have gotten into that aspect of it. But I think I needed these pictures of what I should be, that I found in some of the teachers. ERICKSEN: Were there any students which had a particular influence on you or...who were a real influence on campus? MAILLEFER: Well, being in a class of...the illustrious, I guess I should say, of >49, there were a lot of...veterans who came back the year that I started school, >cause that was right at the end of the war. So there were older students who were very serious as to their goals in life and becoming missionaries, Frank Freed and Paul...(what=s his name?)...[J. Richard ADick@] Reed who started ELWA [a missionary radio station in Liberia]. Can=t remember his first name. And I think we young immature high school graduates stood back and sort of waited for them to lead. I was very surprised, later on, to see people like Ed McCully become a missionary, because that was certainly not his interest when he was in campus. He was sort of big man on the football team with his white...white convertible I almost think it was. Anyway, it was sort of a big man on campus. I didn=t enter into the missionary activities, the Student Missionary Fellowship, because I...I wanted to be a missionary, but I didn=t want the missionary image.